February 27, 2004

Arrivederci!

I know I've been promising to go away for some time. Now it looks as though we will be able to pick up the vehicle this evening at five. Well, this won't be the first time we've hit the road after dark, and usually with much less reason.

Bangor or bust!

Will have very limited access to the internet for the next little while, so posts will be sporadic at best, and quite likely non-existent. But when I get back on the 9th, I will treat you to all the details of our trip, with a focus on the dog parks and playgrounds of Manhattan.

Some sf links

Maybe you should all just go on over to Maud Newton. Here are some more gonzo links:

1. "Paoli du Flippi's" hilarious take on writers who write "speculative fiction" and disdain sf, featuring our national treasure, Margaret Atwood.

2. Jeff Osbourne's "Excerpts from NPR Fan Fiction."¹ Maud also notes an interesting article about slash in that post.

3. A site devoted to scientific inventions introduced in sf texts.

¹ NPR=National Public Radio, the U.S. rough equivalent to CBC radio.

Citations

There is a persuasive post over at Keywords about the potential in electronic technologies for redefining how we cite and manage information. After a number of suggestions about the potential of various technologies, Kerim laments,

I would love to see academics making more use of technology like those mentioned above, but I don't see how they can afford to when academic promotion is so tightly linked to the commercial publishing world with its inflated costs and outmoded technology.

Here here. Though I am certain that it is only a matter of time; enough people are happily embracing these technologies already, despite the constrictions of tenure and promotion.

One of my graduate instructors at York U once brought a file-box of index cards to our class. It was one of countless boxes she used while writing her doctoral dissertation on a group of Southern American poets — their correspondence included — in the days before Xeroxing. She visited various depositories and copied everything by hand. And this was not a short project; it was so substantial that it went into double volumes and her institution instituted a rule, which still apparently bears her name, limiting the length of dissertations. We all looked askance; our own students will no doubt be doing the same. They already do; I can make them roll their eyes or stare incredulously when I wax nostalgic about the Brother portable electric typewriter that saw me through my undergraduate degree (and well into my Master's), or carbon paper, or other quaint arcana.

February 26, 2004

Participatory web art

Participatory, yet random. Go to this link and help to rewrite one of those gruesome fire-and-brimstone tracts that you sometimes find in public toilets. Link from Long story; short pier.

Canada reads, eh?

I don't know what I think of the Canada Reads project. I have not participated in it yet (side note: there is a yet-to-be-determined prize — probably a book from my "to read" shelf — for the reader who comes up with an accurate count of the messages in which yours truly admits to not having read something), and yet I like the idea of us all (!) having something in common to talk about. An old friend of mine once waxed lyrical about how she, temporarily in — I can't remember, let's say Whitehorse — always had lots to talk about to a friend in — hmmm — Gander, because they both listened to the CBC.

Before I get more sentimental, here, via Bookslut, is a link to a behind-the-scenes look at this year's panel.

And for those who want to play along, this year's book is The Last Crossing by Guy Vanderhaeg.

Beaten by a quiz

Maud was right. I should never have taken the book quiz to "identify my literary match." There is too much riding on it; best to stick to what type of coffee drink or flavour of breath mint I am. (Though I did have investment in the western feminist icon and the which author's fiction are you quizzes.) Anyway, I took the book quiz several times and like none of the results:

Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maude Montgomery (puleese!)
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card is admittedly closer, but definitely not there yet.
Prufrock and Other Observations by T.S. Eliot. As if.
The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman. Whatever.
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. Okay, well at least I've read it.
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. This is where I gave up.

February 25, 2004

More fun with words

Two more from the marvellous Bookslut:

Monkeys writing Hamlet and summarizing novels in twenty-five words:

Pride and Prejudice: "High-principled woman who is not so superficial as to be taken in by wealth and good looks chooses the handsome, shaggable one anyway."

Round peg in a round hole

Athena


Which Of The Greek Gods Are You ?
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Thanks to a Ratboy — er, I mean, Morpheus — for the quiz.

Women's SF

Stumbled across this list on an old post at More Like This WebLog: Gwyneth Jones's list of top ten women's sf (go to the link for her explanations)—

The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, Kate Wilhelm
Up the Walls of the World, James Tiptree, Jr. (Alice Sheldon)
The Female Man, Joanna Russ
Cyteen, CJ Cherryh
Grass, Sheri Tepper
Synners, Pat Cadigan
Sarah Canary, Karen Joy Fowler
Light Music, Kathleen Ann Goonan
Natural History, Justina Robson

Let's just say, I haven't read all ten. This summer. (repeat as necessay)

More writes, "I'd gone with Gibbon's Decline and Fall instead of Grass for the Tepper, because of the comedy." Myself, I'd stick with Grass. And I'd put on some Rebecca Ore, maybe Slow Funeral (not sf, really, I know, unless "s" means "speculative.")

#@%*!

Or I should say, $$$$$$!! A routine pre-trip tune-up has turned into a sinkhole. We need struts, whatever they are. Which should arrive tomorrow, as they were ordered today. So we should have the car on Friday. So we should be able to make Bangor, Maine late Friday night in order to cut a couple of hours off the long haul to NYC on Saturday. So, at the least, a day and a half less in the Big Apple, and who knows how much less money to spend. I'm already cranky. Imagine how awful our routine pre-trip grousing is going to be this time.

The 5 'Virtues' of Successful Graduate Students

Found this article via Mischief to Data. Not sure why "virtues" is in quotation marks. Anyway, it's shorter than one of those books.

February 24, 2004

Yet another post on Naomi Wolf

Haven't yet mentioned the Naomi Wolf/Harold Bloom incident, though it has been all over the blogosphere and in the media. (The Invisible Adjunct breaks the story here.) But no, I have not characterized it correctly; I have echoed the sensational turn the story has been given in the media. It is not really the "Wolf/Bloom incident," or even the "Wolf/Paglia incident," though it seems that the latter would dearly like to make it so — and the media is sure picking up on the cat-fight angle — but rather the Wolf-being-stonewalled-by-Yale incident. And "incident" is surely the wrong word, too; according to Wolf what she describes is a long-standing practice rather than something as self-contained as an "incident." At any rate, I want to wade in long enough to say that whatever criticisms one may have of Wolf and/or her writing and/or her motivations, she is absolutely correct to blow the whistle, not just on a lecher, bad health notwithstanding, but more significantly, surely, on the institution that continues tacitly to condone his actions. That was not twenty years ago.

Though I have to say that the inclusion with the story of a photo of the toothsome-although-big-haired Wolf, circa 1982, seems gratuitous.

The whole debacle provides some interesting perspective on this post from Jon Mandle at Crooked Timber about Harvey Mansfield's reminiscences about the "good old days" at Harvard when men were men and women were status objects. And also on this post at the Little Professor which links to a post at academicgame about proposed policies at the U of California against faculty/student relationships.

Addendum: 25/2/04: 10:21am: The mutual admiration between scribblingwoman and unlocking the air continues apace. May I direct your attention to this pithy analysis?

Not sf

This via jill/txt: according to The Guardian, there is a recent Pentagon report that not only acknowledges the existence of global warming, but warns that we are facing a global catastrophe.

Make mine a decaf

You're a Classic Cup 'O' Joe!


What Kind of Coffee are You?
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[I really must set up that side blog.]

Thanks to thinking with my fingers for wasting my time the link.

U.S. Postal Service champions gay rights

Re. the Dr. Seuss commemorative stamp:

First Ernie and Bert, then Tinky Winky. But surely the world of Dr. Seuss is uncontroversial? Wrong.

February 23, 2004

Blogging for tenure

As I am going up for tenure next year, this coming summer I will be revisiting the discussion that took place sometime ago on various sites — here, here, here, here, and here, for starters — about how weblogs can, or even should, count for academics going up for tenure and promotion. I have been discussing the whole issue with my Chair, who as a poet and playwright is sympathetic to claims of the worth of non-traditional writing. His advice is to put my argument in terms that the committee will understand (e.g. a blog is not peer-reviewed, but it is blogrolled and linked).

Just saw a link on Bookslut and while I initially chortled along with her, I then thought, well, these would be terms the most technophobic would understand. So. I've marked the link. How about a nice lavender, with curlicues?

Running over a fly with a tank

Update on the Asimov's pornogate debacle, via Bookslut: Asimov's responds.

February 22, 2004

And I have to say

the MT-Textile 2.0 plugin from Brad Choate is pretty cool. It makes coding on the fly a lot easier. Highly recommended for anyone who finds that tripping over HTML impedes their flow.

Noted

Two from the Bookslut:

1. Japanese manga for girls and young women.

2. A commemorative stamp has been issued for the late Dr. Seuss.

Followup

The Invisible Adjunct links to a followup to the story (see previous entry) of Matthew Richardson, the 23 year old Engineering student who lectured on global finance from a torn-up textbook: apparently his Chinese hosts are feeling litigious. Mr. Richardson is unrepentant: “I know about as much about the law as I do about finance, which is not very much, but I don’t think they stand a chance.”

And was his fly open too?

This scenario might just replace all those nightmares about going on stage in the lead but not knowing my lines/where my script is/where my costume is/what the play is:

mirabilis links to a story about an Oxford engineering student who, apparently mistaken for a renowned economist, was booked to do a series of lectures in Beijing.

The classic case is the hapless academic in David Lodge's Small World who struggles throughout the entire novel to write a plenary speech about contemporary criticism for a conference but cannot get beyond the first line. (Anyone reading this who is on the verge of graduate school — and the three of you know who you are — must read Small World and Changing Places. There's a lot less money floating around these days, but otherwise la plus ça change... A friend of mine had all Lodge's academic novels and used to re-read them whenever she got irritated with grad school.)

February 21, 2004

Tristram Shandy; print

wood s lot links to a memorable post in maisonneuve about moveable type (the printing technology, not the weblog programme). I like the paragraph on Tristram Shandy, quoted in the referring post. I'll be teaching it next Sept., and will remember this:

The professor envies his students one thing: that this is their first reading of Tristram Shandy. The professor admits then to pitying himself and his students one thing: that the book is not being read in its original: meaning, the black, blank and marbled pages are all reproductions of the idea of the page, but never the actual page its significance begs it to be: meaning, Tristram Shandy no longer exists, and the only way to prolong its life was to transfer its significance into a simulacrum’s life.

Aspiring writers

You could do a lot worse than to read Making Light, Teresa Nielsen Hayden's blog. She has a new post on getting an agent, and her earlier post about rejection letters is a classic. Also see her entry on how one writer got their MS out of the slush pile.

Stephenson

Henry Farrell at Crooked Timber links to an excellent post by Timothy Burke at Easily Distracted about Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver which concludes, "Quicksilver, like Foucault, travels farther and tries harder to give us a way of representing the early modern European world that doesn’t just make into a toddler version of our own times." (Students of English 3204: apparently Newton is a character. Early modern geeks.) It's been out for awhile I know, but it's beyond a door-stopper, it's a breadbox of a book, and I'm in good company, it would seem, for not having finished it yet. That's what summers are for, correct? Though I have better get a move on as the next book in the cycle has already been published, and the third volume, modestly titled The System of the World, is due out in Sept.¹

Stephenson is a writer to follow. His earlier novels — Zodiac, Snow Crash, which brought him widespread attention, The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer (and if I hadn't already been a fan, that subtitle would have won me over) — were inventive, funny, and clear-sighted, and with Cryptonomicon he broadened his ambition and began producing REALLY IMPORTANT works.

He has a couple of other texts out there I haven't read: The Big U,² an early novel about American college life, and In the Beginning...Was the Command Line, a non-fiction text about personal computing (before he switched to the side of the angels³), intended for Wired but not published there. He has also published, as Stephen Bury, The Cobweb and Interface, both recommended (by me at least; there seems to be no mention of them on Stephenson's site).

He has a very groovy-looking site, and a wiki called Metaweb, built around Quicksilver but intended to expand and become a way of organizing information.

And here is a brief interview in Wired that contextualizes his last several novels.

¹ Filed under "Verbosity" on Stephenson's site: "As must be obvious, I am not an adherent of the Cult of Brevity. Personally, I am delighted to read extremely long books, or series of books, as long as they hold my interest. To me it seems self-evident that the Cult of Brevity is grievously mistaken, and am not inclined to dispute it here."

² Filed under "Juvenilia" on Stephenson's site: "The Big U is, in many respects, a juvenile work, and should be understood as such. Zodiac: the eco-thriller is somewhat more mature but still quite obviously the work of a young man with a lot of spare time on his hands. I don't cringe so much at Snow Crash and most of my later work."

³ The same: "In the Beginning was the Command Line is now badly obsolete and probably needs a thorough revision. For the last couple of years I have been a Mac OS X user almost exclusively."

Update (24/2/04—12:06): Here, via thinking with my fingers, is a link to the complete text of Stephenson's In the Beginning...Was the Command Line, on HarperCollin's Cryptonomicon site.

Start spreading the news

We're off to NYC in a few days to visit the Jinker Boy's Nonna, see a friend who is at NYU on a fellowship, see friends and family, and who knows? Maybe even go to some museums or whatnot. As is usual with our trips, this one is upon us before we realised and we are rushing about getting haircuts (us) and tune-ups (the car) in the next couple of days. Leaving on Thursday and driving; the long drive — from New Brunswick, through Maine, and then into more populous regions, and then into too populous regions — lessens the culture shock and gives us some wheels while we're there.

February 20, 2004

Children on line

I have a dilemma about my progeny: specifically, about how, or even if, to refer to him in this blog.

Since he is the centre of the universe it would be somehow stilted and artificial to skirt around his existence. On the other hand, he may not appreciate his buddies being able, in a few years, to google a post about how cute his little toesies are. And there is the darker side of the web to worry about. This is not an anonymous blog.

I used to post photos of him to my home page long before I ever blogged, and I'm almost certain that the only people who ever saw them were my students, but even that started to seem risky.

I could use a pet name for him, one of those cutesy or witty names that many bloggers favour (and if any parents of Knat, the Little Man, or Smaller Baby are reading this, I mean to include you among the witty). Most of the nicknames I actually use are just plain silly, though — Monkey-butt, Booboo, Monkey-boy, Stinky-pants — so I'd have to think up something a little more distinguished. And original. Imagine! I found another Monkey-boy out there.

Addendum (5:04pm): I posted this somewhat abruptly, before a meeting. The second paragraph is not meant to imply that my students offer the risk. And the final paragraph somehow lacks closure. But then, so do my thoughts on the matter.

February 19, 2004

The Red Planet; the Apple IIc

Two meditations on Mars at the wonderfully redesigned long story; short pier.

William Gibson owes it all to Apple (link from Maud Newton).

February 17, 2004

Amazon.com update

Maud Newton links to an article in the Toronto Star which reports that Amazon.com is removing the offending anonymous reviews.

Introducing...

Three former students who blogged for my sf class last term have not only kept up their blogs, but recently refurbished them. If you would like to see what three of UNBSJ's best and brightest are up to, check out (in alphabetical order) A Ratboy's Notebook, blogging it, and Zhengshu's New Book (brand new; Consumption of Cacti contains previous posts).

Bar codes and SF

From jill/text: links to a page where you can make your own barcode, part of a barcode art site. Check out the Bar Code Ophra.

Some SF links: Maud Newton links to an if-I-hadn't-read-it-on-the-internet-I-would-never-have-believed-it story about complaints that Asimov's sturdy old warhorse is a porn mag.

In the same post she points to a newly-minted blog, Tenser, said the Tensor (ref. Alfred Bester; no, I haven't read it either) that focuses on "Languages and Linguistics, Japanese and Japanese Animation, Science and Science Fiction, Comedy and Comic Books."

And la gringa dishes the dirt on those annoying sf fans.

February 16, 2004

Anonymous reviewing

Following up on the Amazon.com scandal, Henry Farrell posts about the pros and cons of anonymous reviewing, and concludes "the system works reasonably well in the general."

Two funny ones

from Maud Newton:

1. Freud/Jung slash,¹

and

2. Litterati: comics by George Murray.²

¹ we're all adults, right?

² now on doors of selected UNBSJ English faculty.

February 15, 2004

MT Textile 2

So now one can add footnotes¹.

¹ And I love footnotes.

Improving the cityscape

This from Plep: a link to the Billboard Liberation Front. What it says. With links to other culture jammers.

Time keeps on slippin

A recent post from Chuck Tryon about the birthday of his elderly aunt really resonates for me. Both my grandmothers died in the 1990s, one at the age of 99 and one at 100. They both lived in the UK so I didn't see them very often, but I regret that I didn't find out more from them when I did have the chance. Most of what I know about them is filtered through my parents, which is only a fraction of the picture I'm sure. I don't want to make the same mistake with my parents, who are getting on themselves, but I often find that they don't want to talk about the past too much. Or at least, they only want to remember what they want to remember. And more than once I have asked about something significant that they themselves told me, and recently, and they have no recollection. Quicksand.

And then I think, isn't this some sort of Proustian hubris on my part? I have all-too-frequent proof that I can't even remember, or I misremember, events from my own life, so isn't it a fool's errand to run after my parents and grandparents? Don't we just have to accept that most of the sand falls outside the hourglass? One can try and keep journals or somesuch, but in my experience, one writes the least when things are most eventful. And blogging — the kind of blogging I am doing, anyway, as distinct from the more personal sort — is a way of capturing some types of things, but I don't know how helpful all my Barbie posts are going to be, if I ever look back here in an attempt to reconstruct my own past.

It's a Zeitgeist thing: Memento, that new comedy, 50 First Dates (with Adam Sandler! I can't even imagine one). I'm almost finished the 20th annual collection of the Year's Best Science Fiction edited by by Gardner Dozois (review forthcoming; watch this space), and it strikes me — and no doubt this says something about the demographics of successful sf writers — that a disproportionate number of the stories are about Alzheimer's. More on this soon.

February 14, 2004

Angel R.I.P?

Awwk! Just read on Planned Obsolescence that Angel won't be renewed next season. Well that's a helluva Valentine's Day present.

Two thumbs down

From The Little Professor: link to a NYT article (free, but reg. req.) about a scandal at Amazon.com: apparently the reader reviews are sometimes written by authors puffing their own books, or by their antagonists, taking them down a notch. The article goes on to mention famous authors who have reviewed themselves or their friends. (I think we can all be proud that it was the Amazon.ca site that caused the ruckus).

February 13, 2004

Booklovers alert

Via the fascinating mirabilis.ca: the world's largest book: $10,000, 133 lbs. But, it has pictures.

Splitsville!

This just in, via forty-something: Barbie and Ken, after 43 years, are calling it quits. Sources close to the plastic bombshell say that "Blaine," an Australian "boogie boarder," may be behind the break-up. Barbie is scheduled to be interviewed by Barbara Walters next week, and Ken is shopping around a proposal for a tell-all book. Coming soon: Back-on-the-Market Barbie, with "board shorts and a bikini top, [and] metal hoop earrings," and post-break-up Ken, complete with much younger new gal pal.

And two from Plep

1. Positioning composers politically, for those who think art is "above politics." According to this, Wagner did not get such a bad rap after all.

2. "Cold Off The Presses is a growing collection of classic anarchist pamphlets and journals." I like that one of them is called Lucifer: The Light Bearer.

Valentines and cherubs

Two more from Maud Newton:

1. An on-line test of romantic literary knowledge, from The Guardian. No doubt because I am a dix–huitièmiste (the Age of Enlightenment and Reason, don't you know), my score sucked (6/10). Oh well.

2. A link to some eerie photographs by Loretta Lux. Be sure to scroll down and view the portfolio. Beautiful in themselves (and why are all these children so pensive?), and interesting because of the way they have been structured, with a somewhat classical, slightly surreal, painterliness. And for the ways in which, as Stephany Aulenback suggests in her post, they play with conventions of idealized childhood. It is this aspect of the photographs that makes them eerie, and at times uncomfortable. The boy with the ruff (Trolls 1, 2, and 3 on this page): just the barest of allusions to things unsavoury, but enough to unsettle.

And no doubt this is the parent in me speaking. I had a more jaundiced eye, once.

February 12, 2004

A couple of things...

My new

arrived today and I'm too excited mucking around with it to think straight, but here are a couple of things:

Brian Weatherson at Crooked Timber writes about gender neutral language and why it's okay to use "they" for the singular.

The Books Every Educated Person Should Read post is up to 216 comments and 8 follow-ups. People cannot resist lists. (Or offering advice.)

Maud Newton links to Based on the Book, a "compilation of over 950 book titles, short stories, and plays that have been made into motion pictures" using IMDB.

feministe has a lyrical post on, among other things, putting young children to bed.

February 11, 2004

Rape Culture

An excellent post by Ampersand on Alas, a blog about the elements that make up (our/everyone's?) "rape culture." Be sure to read the comments as well.

Crossposted to writingwomen.

LeGuin; Foucault

Two links from the inestimable Maud Newton:

First, from The Guardian, an online discussion with Ursula LeGuin in which she briefly touches on the Harry Potter books: "good fare for its age group, but stylistically ordinary, imaginatively derivative, and ethically rather mean-spirited." Of course, she mainly discusses her own work, but it's hard to resist dishing the dirt.

Second, a review, by Ed Halter in the Voice, of two new books which take exception to the Foucaldian notion of homosexuality as an invention of the nineteenth century, which ends with the evocative question,

Does the modern gay man or lesbian have that much in common with Hellenic boy-lovers, French libertines, or ancient Chinese scholars who carried on openly bisexual affairs? Ironically, because of their deep complexity, [Louis] Crompton's portraits [in Homosexuality and Civilization] could equally suggest that the only shared factors persisting across millennia are indeed acts and desires, not identities.

Addendum (5:09pm): Jessa Crispin at Bookslut also mentions the LeGuin piece.

February 10, 2004

Leftist academics

There is an interesting post from Kieran Healy at Crooked Timber about the tiresome argument that academia is biased against conservative views. A big issue south of the border, apparently, though one also hears it here. I would just say, by way of my own quick response, that while individual professors, indeed many professors, indeed possibly the majority, at least in some faculties, may be varying flavours of left-of-centre, the institution itself certainly is not. Don't get me started on the corporatization of the academy, public institutions being run like private companies, or university presidents being confused with CEOs. I'm going to misquote an excellent bumper sticker a colleague has on his filing cabinet as an apt analogy: "The media is only as liberal as the corporations which own them."

Not Hallmark

More Valentine's Day goodies here, via forty-something.

Sample:

If you ever get mauled by bears,
I hope they stay away from your face

because I think you're cute

Update

155

Books every educated person should read

There is a monster comment-a-thon (151 152 153 comments and counting) going on over at Crooked Timber in response to a post from Harry Brighouse asking for suggestions for "two books you think every educated person should have read, published 1970 or later."

Former students in my science fiction classes: class of 2001: you will be horrified to learn that I suggested Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren, and someone else actually seconded it. Classes of 2002 and 2003: you will be doubly horrified to learn that someone — not me — suggested J.G. Ballard's Crash. See, I told you they were good for you.

All I know is, I have a lot of reading to do.

February 9, 2004

Latest overdue reviews

Ellen Brinks, Gothic Masculinity: effeminacy and the supernatural in English and German Romanticism (Bucknell, 2003), and

Peter K. Garrett, Gothic Reflections: narrative force in nineteenth-century fiction (Cornell, 2003).

Haiku for the masses

And here, thanks to moleskinerie, are two haiku generators, one for valentine's and one for the other 364 days of the year. Here is my randomly generated haiku:

tiredly decadent
hags rusting moonlight bloats, tame
bluebird defecates

Oddly enough, it suits my mood.

Notebooks and nipples

There is yet another evocative post at wood s lot, a paen to pen and paper in these digital times. Specifically, a paen to the Moleskine notebook, including links to a beautiful blog called moleskinerie, and Witold Riedel's Moleskine sketches from the NYC subway. My palms are itching.

Oh, and the nipples? There are some follow-up links about nipplegate.

February 8, 2004

Innoculate yourself against Feb. 14

Via Notes from Coode Street. Very funny. Go.

What if LotR had been written by Jane Austen?

Here is a hilarious site, via Austen-tatious, where are gathered various spoofs of LotR channelled through the likes of Coleridge ("In Khazad-dûm did evil fall / And stately Aragorn despair"), the Beowulf poet ("A great shadow descended / Horrific winged creature with wicked rider"), John Donne ("Goe and catch a falling Ring / Get with child the Elven Queen,"), Robert Burns ("Wee timid, hungry, half-grown hobbit, / Living in hole like ony rabbit,"), John Keats ("O what can ail thee, Frodo lad, / Alone and palely loitering?"), and scads of others. Here is a taste:

e. e. cummings
by Hunter Green

precious) downward
my) the heat rises
O) the mountain rises

like a mouth the earth
swallows
greedily

a finger without its hand
a body without its soul
an evil without its power

bright sun on us both)
remembering(
bobbing forth and back)
my birthday(
he was greedy like the earth)
one life begins(
one life ends)
river like a mouth, cold, hot
ring like a mouth, devouring
consumed i must consume

(Sméagol?)

the ring (O
and the body (my
are consumed (precious

Helen Fielding was mentioned twice, much to my delighted surprise, but of course it wasn't Helen, sister of Henry, but that other Helen Fielding.

Most of the writers who are pastiched here are male, which I suppose is hardly surprising. Some of our students are (were?) thinking of putting on a public debate to discuss the proposition that the LotR is a misogynist text. Hope it goes forward.

February 7, 2004

Who could have doubted it?

Which Silver Screen Siren are you?
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The reason that I am Katherine Hepburn is that the test had no Mae West.

Thanks to Ancarett's Abode for the link.

I think I might look into having a mini-blog in a sidebar for this sort of thing. Of course, then I would have to write more substantial posts. I will think on't.

Just when you think it's over

How could there be anything more to say about Janet Jackson's superbowl exposure? Well here, via forty.comething, is a site that demonstrates how to make cupcakes that look like Jackson's errant breast, complete with puzzling jewelry thingy made from icing.

Jameson on Gibson

And here, via the chutry experiment, is Fredric Jameson's take on William Gibson's Pattern Recognition, published in the New Left Review. Read it, you Gibson groupies. I like the way he compares Gibson to Bruce Sterling.

On the gender front...

Plus ça change, plus c'est le meme chose. Here are two sobering links in this the year of the goddess 2004:

A woman sets off airport security alarms with the chastity belt her husband apparently forced her to wear. (Link from BlogsCanada)

(It was harrowing browsing through what came up when I googled "chastity belt." Who knew?? Somehow this is not what I imagine the proponents of sexual abstinence had in mind.)

Final chastity note: "Two historians say chastity belts are purely medieval myths." Medieval myth, contemporary reality. Huh!

Second link: Another reason not to buy fashion mags: here are two (1, 2) before and after pictures. (Link from feministe. feministe goes on to link to an "uglification" contest — whereby people Photoshop celebrity photographs — and I find it pretty offensive that for many people ugly = old.)

Cross-posted to womenwriting.

Addendum (4:37pm): On the basis of the foregoing, I have applied to join the Bloggers over forty webring (link to the right).

2003 Nebula Nominees

This from the FeministSF listserve: the 2003 Preliminary Nebula Ballot has been announced, with links to stories and excerpts from the novels. This year I have actually read quite a few of the nominees, particularly from among the stories and novellas.

(Any former students of English 3722 reading this: "Potter of Bones" by Eleanor Arnason is one of the nominees.)

February 6, 2004

A couple of book links

Two links via Maud Newton:

Pop-up and Movable Books from the University of North Texas: A collection of fabulous old books.

(Do you like pop-up books? I do, and Little Bump loves them. And he is finally at an age when he can restrain himself from ripping them to shreds. He particularly loves Jan Pieñkowski's Monster Pops. Last summer I bought him a copy of L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz illustrated by Robert Sabuda, but that's still on the high shelf.

Second link: Cory Doctorow's Eastern Standard Tribe is out, both on paper and electronically. This is the second novel Doctorow has released both ways; his first, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (2003) is also available on-line and from fine bookstores everywhere. Doctorow writes,

[H]ere is the book as a non-physical artifact. A file. A bunch of text, slithery bits that can cross the world in an instant, using the Internet, a tool designed to copy things very quickly from one place to another; and using personal computers, tools designed to slice, dice and rearrange collections of bits. These tools demand that their users copy and slice and dice — rip, mix and burn! — and that's what I'm hoping you will do with this.

What does this mean, though, alongside the safety of the fixed book version? Though I suppose one could slice and dice that as well.

Here's a good one...

From Lying Media Bastards: apparently someone is launching a class action suit againt Janet Jackson, Justin Timberlake, CBS, MTV, and Viacom for the Jackson nipple imbroglio, on behalf of all Americans, because they have apparently "suffered injuries and damages to their reputations as Americans."

I just want someone to explain to me how that nipple jewellry works.

February 5, 2004

"He said bums"

I know with the state of the world and all, and having Paul Martin Junior as PM (say his name as Marg Delahunty does), I should at least try to put up the occasional serious post. But this Guardian piece about the reactions of a group of children to various classic rock pieces is laugh-out-loud, sorry, LOL funny. Even funnier are some of the comments from the grown-ups. Of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" (1991), young critic Benjamin says, "This would definitely win Pop Idol." Thanks, Crooked Timber.

February 4, 2004

Carrie, eat your heart out.

Here, via the amazing Plep, is a blog about shoes. All about shoes.

I visited the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto the last time I was there. They have some lovely 18thc shoes,

and I was delighted to find a magnet with a picture of them in the giftshop. (If they set up a shoe shop, they would make a killing!)

Joe and I visited the Ellis Island Museum shortly after it reopened—a few years back now—and the thing I remember most strongly is a single, tiny leather bootie, lost by someone (and where are they now?), sitting in a glass display case.

What is it about shoes?

Arthur C. Clarke award

The Bookslut has alerted us that the nominees for this year's Arthur C. Clarke award have been announced. She writes, "The one thing these books have in common? Painfully bad cover art." She's right. Haven't read any of them yet, of course. Perhaps next summer.

February 3, 2004

No poetry at the White House

Here, via thinking with my fingers, is a link to "The White House has disinvited the poets" by Julia Alvarez, written after Laura Bush withdrew an invitation to poets involved in the antiwar movement. It is rather sweet about the First Lady, "married to a scarier fellow" than any poet.

A sadder companion to an earlier post about the lack of poetry in Washington.

Unelectable reprise

Those of you who were following the unelectable meme—and you know who you are—may be interested in the following exchange taking place on H-Mac. It started with some poor fellow from France, who probably didn't know what he was stepping into, posting a message about miserable failure. I followed up with a post mentioning someone unelectable. These two messages were promptly followed by two others, both rather tetchy. A non-polical forum, tricks are for kids, crypto-politics, yada yada yada. Both respondents freely, one might even say obliviously, admit to more egregious actions themselves. My response is a model of wit and restraint. I am shocked, shocked at this lack of civility among Mac users.

No word yet from France.

Gifts of web art

Jill at jill/txt has an interesting post on web art; check it out and follow the links. And here is a link to the Whitney Museum portal to net art. Here is hope for anyone worrying that the net is loosing the ethos of free exchange.

February 2, 2004

Time savers

Following up from my earlier nod to the PowerPoint Goodnight Moon, Lolita, Hamlet etc., here is a link, via Maud Newton, to Book-a-Minute Classics. Samples that would have saved my students a lot of reading in the last couple of weeks:

"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Ancient Mariner: I am creepy and old. Listen to me.

Wedding Guest: I'm late, but I'll listen.

Ancient Mariner: I killed an albatross. Then everyone died.

THE END

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Walton: Dear Margaret: My ship picked up this guy. He RULES.

Frankenstein: I discovered the secret of life, and everyone died. (dies)

Frankenstein's Monster: Inexplicably, I have become suicidal. (jumps out a window)

THE END

February 1, 2004

SFF: the state of the union

Two posts at s1ngularity::criticism worth a look (two recent posts, I mean. s1ngularity::criticism is always worth a look): one by Gabe Chouinard, "Does Size Matter," on the doorstoppers that are sold as sff these days, and "Lonely in a Dark House," by Alan Lattimore, on what he characterizes as a shrinking back from real radicalism within the field.

You know that satire is dead,

as Neil Gaiman writes, when you read that some right–wing nutbar has proposed Dubya and Tony Blair for the Noble Peace Prize "for having dared to take the necessary decision to launch a war on Iraq without having the support of the UN." Mind you, it sounds like all and sundry can make nominations, including "members of parliament and cabinet ministers from around the world and some university professors."

My Spidey sense is tingling

Well this is pretty accurate. The mediation part, I mean. But I'm not blond.

You are 44% geek

You are a geek liaison, which means you go both ways. You can hang out with normal people or you can hang out with geeks which means you often have geeks as friends and/or have a job where you have to mediate between geeks and normal people. This is an important role and one of which you should be proud. In fact, you can make a good deal of money as a translator. Normal: Tell our geek we need him to work this weekend. You [to Geek]: We need more than that, Scotty. You'll have to stay until you can squeeze more outta them engines! Geek [to You]: I'm givin' her all she's got, Captain, but we need more dilithium crystals! You [to Normal]: He wants to know if he gets overtime.

Take the Polygeek Quiz at Thudfactor.com

Thanks to feministe for the link.

Speling

Mark Woods at wood s lot links to an article by Stephen Henighan in Geist called "Bad Spellers." Henighan decries the haphazard ways in which writers, editors and publishers conform—or fail to conform—to Canadian usage.

Thought for the day (and very appropriate just now, as people have started to drive over the Kennebecasis River in force, here in Saint John): Henighan writes,

In the Ottawa Valley village where I grew up, grade four girls from families with modest formal schooling would chant, “‘Ice’ is a noun so when ‘practice’ is a noun you write it with ‘ice.’” This dictum enabled them to disentangle “licence” from “license” and spell “defence” correctly. Such seemingly trivial ditties are the bricks and mortar of a culture.

I fear that we were very backward, in Hamilton.

In the post immediately below, Woods links to Ronald de Sousa's "The Day of the Condour or How to be a Propour Canadian Spellour."